The Nightingale’s Sonata: The Musical Odyssey of Lea Luboshutz

In this thoroughly researched biography, Wolf, a musician and arts consultant, writes of his grandmother Lea Luboshutz (1885–1965 ), one of the first internationally known female concert violinists. Detailing Luboshutz’s family life, relationships, and flight from revolutionary chaos in Russia to Europe and then the U.S., Wolf tells a fascinating tale of a Jewish woman surviving and ultimately thriving in a tumultuous time. Born in Odessa, Luboshutz survived a childhood of relative poverty. Her musical talents became apparent early in life, and by age 13 she was admitted to the Moscow Conservatory. Wolf writes evenhandedly about his grandmother, tracing her career on international concert tours to her first performance at Carnegie Hall in 1907. In 1921, following the Russian Revolution, Luboshutz emigrated to Berlin with her 13-year-old son Boris (“Lea held on to her precious Amati violin at all times. Boris was in charge of the fifty American dollars”). After a short time, they came to America, where Luboshutz obtained her famed violin, a Stradivarius named the Nightingale; performed César Franck’s “Sonata for Violin and Piano,” a piece that she championed; and became a founding faculty member of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Classical music fans will delight in this astute assessment of an influential performer and academic. (June)